Uarda : a Romance of Ancient Egypt — Complete eBook

Ani looked down meditatively, and continued—­Rameses
is fond of comparing you with your father. That
is unfair, for he—­who is now with the justified—­was
without an equal; at once the bravest of heroes and
the most skilful of scribes. You are judged unjustly;
and it grieves me all the more that you belong, through
your mother, to my poor but royal house. We will
see whether I cannot succeed in putting you in the
right place. For the present you are required
in Syria almost as soon as you have got home.
You have shown that you are a man who does not fear
death, and who can render good service, and you might
now enjoy your wealth in peace with your wife.”

“I am alone,” said Paaker.

“Then, if you come home again, let Katuti seek
you out the prettiest wife in Egypt,” said the
Regent smiling. “She sees herself every
day in her mirror, and must be a connoisseur in the
charms of women.”

Ani rose with these words, bowed to Paaker with studied
friendliness, gave his hand to Katuti, and said as
he left the hall:

“Send me to-day the—­the handkerchief—­by
the dwarf Nemu.”

When he was already in the garden, he turned once
more and said to Paaker

“Some friends are supping with me to-day; pray
let me see you too.”

The pioneer bowed; he dimly perceived that he was
entangled in invisible toils. Up to the present
moment he had been proud of his devotion to his calling,
of his duties as Mohar; and now he had discovered that
the king, whose chain of honor hung round his neck,
undervalued him, and perhaps only suffered him to
fill his arduous and dangerous post for the sake of
his father, while he, notwithstanding the temptations
offered him in Thebes by his wealth, had accepted
it willingly and disinterestedly. He knew that
his skill with the pen was small, but that was no reason
why he should be despised; often had he wished that
he could reconstitute his office exactly as Ani had
suggested, but his petition to be allowed a secretary
had been rejected by Rameses. What he spied out,
he was told was to be kept secret, and no one could
be responsible for the secrecy of another.

As his brother Horus grew up, he had followed him
as his obedient assistant, even after he had married
a wife, who, with her child, remained in Thebes under
the care of Setchem.

He was now filling Paaker’s place in Syria during
his absence; badly enough, as the pioneer thought,
and yet not without credit; for the fellow knew how
to write smooth words with a graceful pen.

Paaker, accustomed to solitude, became absorbed in
thought, forgetting everything that surrounded him;
even the widow herself, who had sunk on to a couch,
and was observing him in silence.

He gazed into vacancy, while a crowd of sensations
rushed confusedly through his brain. He thought
himself cruelly ill-used, and he felt too that it
was incumbent on him to become the instrument of a
terrible fate to some other person. All was dim
’and chaotic in his mind, his love merged in
his hatred; only one thing was clear and unclouded
by doubt, and that was his strong conviction that
Nefert would be his.